


we stand amidst the ruins (and laugh while we cry)

by eternalchill



Category: Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Backstory, Black Widow - Freeform, Dark, Gen, Hawkeye - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Iron Man - Freeform, Maximoff Twin Feels, Non-Linear Narrative, Red Room, Tags Are Hard, sorta cannon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 18:43:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5302646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalchill/pseuds/eternalchill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalia Romanova is smiling when she becomes Natasha Romanoff, and sheds her cocoon. </p><p>Tony Stark is a man and he forgets, forgets that he can't just change what he wants.</p><p>He has a brother who whispers, let's run away, Clint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we stand amidst the ruins (and laugh while we cry)

Black Widow  
~  
Build the world in fire, they tell her between the kiss of whips (move faster, girl) and the peeling agony of bullets under her skin (dance, child). Don't think, obey and she snaps necks and splinters lives.

They open her up, when she can dance and dodge and win secrets with a kiss. Reach in and pull out red.

Widow they say, a success.

She kills men when they are open and giving beneath her. Hears their secrets between thrusts. She paints her world red, dazzles trainers and smiles bloody smiles to match her hair.

Kill this one.

She destroys them, until all that is left is a smear and a forgotten lover grieving. They smile, say perfect and she looses herself, bit by bit. Cocoons herself in red.

She finds herself again, in a city at the gleam on an arrow held by a man who offers her a chance. You don't have to do this, I can help wipe away the red.

Natalia Romanova is smiling when she becomes Natasha Romanoff, and sheds her cocoon.

Fear me, she whispers to the world and feels it tremble. Her ledger drips and she soaks it still, so that it may never dry.

~~~

Iron Man  
~  
Tony Stark is a creating force.

Lines of code flow from his fingertips and designs mash themselves together in his mind. They strains the confines of reality and he forgets how to sleep in desperation. He revolutionizes the world in a cave with bits of scraps and whispering lies.

Tony Stark is a man and he forgets, forgets that he can't just change what he wants.

(he changes other things too)

He makes bombs and the world loves him. He stops and his life falls apart into itty bitty pieces like the shrapnel near his heart.

Obie dies and he makes Pepper survive.

Only, then he's dying and Natalie is Natasha and Agent has a name and things are changing (Captain America is alive, wouldn't dad be happy) and aliens are real and he's flying into space. He thinks he's going to follow his parents footsteps (only he can't, not yet), but the Hulk is roaring in his ear and his heart remembers how to work.

They eat shwarma and somehow become a team (family, closer than even Rhodney and Pepper) and they're saving the world again. Only this time it's his fault (stupid, stupid, stupid), he thought he could make it so they didn't have to fight anymore. His lines of code become their greatest opponent and JARVIS is gone, just like Jarvis.

(the kids blame him too. Blame him for the bombs that worked and the bomb that didn't.)

Clint has a family and isn't that cute (he's not jealous.) Rogers and him are fighting (big surprise) and the ground is lifting into the sky. They're fighting, argument forgotten and-

-the kid's dead, the Hulk (Bruce, Bruciebear, Sciencebro) is gone and-

They've won.

Tony Stark is a destroying force, people are blind to the fact that his creations have always, always come from the ashes of his destructions.

(and now they see)

~~~

Hawkeye  
~  
He doesn't grow up nice. He grows up mean, with blood on his teeth and bruises on his arms. Bones just waiting to be broken. He doesn't grow up smart; not like some. He grows up old and tired and a wrong word from never waking up.

He has a brother who whispers, let's run away, Clint. When their parents are wrapped around a tree and the orphanage's cold is a lurking thing in their bones.

He never grew up smart.

At the circus he's not just a boy with a brother who's bigger and meaner and can take what he wants because, are you going to tell? Risk the wrath of Barney Barton? He's boy, then Clint and at some point he becomes 'Hawkeye, the World's Greatest Marksman'.  
(He falls in love with the title. It makes him more than the dumb kid who ran away to the circus.)

Only, because he's Clint (Barton, Hawkeye, Sorry Little Shit), things go wrong and he's left to die as a gift from his brother. (His rage isn't a force yet, not like dear old dad's, but it will be. It will.) He turns his face away, learns the darkness and how shadows curve. Learns how to kill a man and how much he's willing to make others pay.

He's lost control and--

-Hello Agent Coulson. Only it's less of a hello and more of a firefight and a bullet in his leg.

He joins the side of the angels (they have good dental.)

Then in a city, under a sky so soaked with blood he can feel it rain in his hair, blur his flawless vision, he offers a choice to a killer more spider than a woman. She says yes, like he says to a god years later in a base underground when his thoughts turn blue. (Only... he knows his yes is different, no matter how much blue there is.)

After, after the his world is careening from the arrows he fired and everything is said and done, the Avengers are there. Broken, bloody, flawed things with power. With wisdom meant for gods. With luck. With stupidity. 

(He fits right in.)


End file.
